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No, He’s Not Hitler—Yet. Trumpism is not Fascism—Yet. And while 63 MILLION AMERICANS voted for this guy, that is only 27 Percent of the voting-eligible population. There is plenty of resistance out there to make sure he doesn’t become Hitler and we don’t succumb to neo-fascism. Let’s get to work.

Uber says it is cooperating with an investigation into a fatal accident involving one of its self-driving vehicles over the weekend. A woman in Tempe, Arizona, was struck and killed as she was crossing a street outside of a crosswalk, according to police.

Black boys raised in America, even in the wealthiest families, still earn less as adults than white boys with similar backgrounds. That's according to a new study from the Equality of Opportunity Project, which looked at U.S. Census data to study the lives of 20 million children.

In Russia, a small number of women have spoken out publicly against powerful men who they say have sexually harassed them. Journalist Daria Zhuk is one of them. She says a powerful politician sexually harassed her in 2014 and that Russian women can learn from the #MeToo movement in America.

The world-famous Bolshoi Theatre is a Russian icon. But a new staging of the ballet Anna Karenina takes the beloved Russian epic — and the theater — into the 21st century. NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Bolshoi principal dancer Olga Smirnova.

Do states have a moral right to exclude people from their territory? It might seem obvious that states do have such a right, but Sarah Fine questions this in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast. This episode of Philosophy Bites was sponsored by the Examining Ethics podcast from the Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics at DePauw University. You can su […]

How do I know I'm not dreaming? This sort of question has puzzled philosophers for thousands of years. Eric Schwitzgebel discusses scepticism and its history with Nigel Warburton in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast. This episode of Philosophy Bites was sponsored by the Examining Ethics podcast from the Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics at D […]

What is a robustly demanding good, and what has that got to do with friendship and love? Find out in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast in which Nigel Warburton interviews Princeton Professor Philip Pettit about this topic.

Philosophers talk about 'knowing how' and 'knowing what'. But what is involved in knowing a person? Katalin Farkas discusses this question with David Edmonds in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast. This episode was sponsored by the Examining Ethics podcast from the Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics at DePauw University.

Are human beings fundamentally different from the rest of the animal world? Can what we essentially are be captured in a biological or evolutionary description? Roger Scruton discusses the nature of human nature with Nigel Warburton in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast.

The Hard Problem of consciousness is the difficulty of reconciling experience with materialism. In this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast, in conversation with Nigel Warburton, Anil Seth, a neuroscientist, explains his alternative approach to consciousness,which he labels the 'Real Problem. Anil is a Wellcome Trust Engagement Fellow.

Why does apparently trivial ritual play such an important part in some ancient Chinese philosophy? Michael Puett, co-author of The Path, explains in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast. This episode of Philosophy Bites was sponsored by the Examining Ethics podcast from the Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics at DePauw University. You can subscribe to […]

What is Art? That's not an easy question to answer. Some philosophers even think it can't be answered. Aaron Meskin discusses this question on this episode of Aesthetics Bites. Aesthetics Bites is a podcast series of interviews with top thinkers in the philosophy of art. It is a collaboration between the London Aesthetics Forum and Philosophy Bites […]

The process of dying can be horrible for many, but is there anything bad about death itself? The obvious answer is that deprives us of something that we might otherwise have experienced. But that leads to further philosophical issues...Shelly Kagan discusses some of these with Nigel Warburton in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast.

We certainly disagree about aesthetic judgments in a range of cases. But is anyone right? Is there no disputing about taste? Are all tastes equal? Elisabeth Schellekens Damman discusses disagreement about taste in this episode of Aesthetics Bites. Aesthetics Bites is a podcast series of interviews with top thinkers in the philosophy of art. It is a collabo […]

Cobalt used to be a byproduct of copper mining, used in everyday, boring stuff like tires and magnets. Now it's one of the most important and sought after metals on the periodic table. This has implications for big tech firms like Apple.

The column centers on the Romney campaign’s response to the “you didn’t build that” idea that President Obama is now famous for uttering:

…Romney has told campaign audiences variations of the following: “When a young person makes the honor roll, I know he took a school bus to get to the school, but I don’t give the bus driver credit for the honor roll.”

When he delivered that line in Manassas on Saturday with Ryan in tow, Romney drew wild applause. He went on to say that a person who gets a promotion and raise at work, and who commutes to the office by car, doesn’t owe anything to the clerk at the motor vehicles department who processes driver’s licenses.

What I hear Romney saying, and I suspect many others will also hear, is that the little people don’t contribute and don’t count.

Robinson rhetorically wondered whether any of Romney’s children ever rode the bus to school and he went on to describe the importance of good bus drivers in terms of their interaction with children and their “important role in ensuring a child’s physical and emotional well-being.” Then he wrote:

School bus drivers don’t make a lot of money. Nor, for that matter, do the clerks who help keep unqualified drivers and unsafe vehicles off the streets. But these workers are not mere cogs in a machine designed to service those who make more money. They are part of a community.

The same is true of teachers, police officers, firefighters and others whom Romney and Ryan dismiss as minions of “big government” rather than public servants.

Well, it is painfully obvious that community is a contemptible concept to today’s breed of high-profile Ayn Randish Republicans. Those who are wealthy, or those who are on their way, are the ones worth worrying about, and the rest of us should consider ourselves fortunate that these “job creators” bother to throw us a few crumbs in the form of often low-paying jobs with little or no benefits.

Many times I have heard grateful anti-big government crumb-eaters extol the virtues of the moneyed class by saying something like, “I have never got a job from a poor person.” So essentially these folks would rather think of themselves as wards of the wealthy than wards of an activist and effective government that seeks not to destroy capitalism but to regulate it such that it works for all people, for the entire community.

Although he now says he rejects Ayn Rand’s philosophy, Paul Ryan has as late as 2009 embraced her ideas, which Robinson says place “self-interest as the highest, noblest calling and equate capitalist success with moral virtue.” As for Romney, “While he has never pledged allegiance to the Cult of Rand, his view of society seems basically the same.”

Romney made much of his fortune by buying and selling businesses, always doing so with indifference to each transaction’s effect on the community. The principle involved in making these purchasing or selling decisions was not consideration of the flesh and blood cogs in any of the business machinery, but in the profits that could be reaped from such deals. Nothing could better illustrate Rand’s “virtue of selfishness” than that.

Ryan in denying his affection for Rand, says it’s because her ideas constitute “an atheist philosophy” that “reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview.”

If that is so, if reducing “reducing human interactions down to mere contracts” so appalls him, he should explain why he is willing to serve with a man whose fortune was made by doing just that.

Jane Reaction

ansonburlingame

I have never heard a conservative say that nor have I ever heard Ayn Rand write it as such. “Little people” receive compensation (in a free society, a free, capitalist society) for their contributions.

The clerk providing a drivers liscence gets paid to do so. You claim, “not enough”. Fine. Raise the salary of the clerk to pay him or her “enough” and see how much it costs to get a drivers licsence and listen to the screams from the “poor” over “you want me to PAY THAT MUCH to get a drivers licsence”????

Oh no you say, we don’t expect the poor to have to pay that much. Let’s have a sliding scale of payments for such fees instead. A rich man must pay $1000 for such a piece of paper and a poor man gets one for free, right?

OR instead we can just give every citizen a free drivers licsence and let the “government” pay for it, right? Na, that’s not “fair”.

However, as long as we live in a free society, no clerk has to give out a licsence if they don’t like their pay. They can move on to a better paying job instead, right? Not really, in my view. A better paying job might be hard to find for someone ONLY with the skills and training to “give out a piece of paper”.

In a free society “little people” have the OPPORTUNITY to become “big people” however, a real and FREE opportunity (free like education through HS, etc.) Want to be more than a paper pusher later in life? ANYONE has the freedom to strive for such a non-paper pusher job but there is no guarantee you will get such unless……

I agree John, an amusing link. Indeed, we have all seen evidence that celebrity comes with a bubble, a durable membrane not easily pierced by reality. It does raise questions: What can you give the man who has everything material? What makes Mitt run? Is it altruism? Patriotism? Competitive elan? Personally I submit that it is the latter. Something there is in certain human beings that craves contention, a device for acquiring that universal personality staple, attention.